Triangle Court (proposed)
Architect: KOH Architecture
Photo: KOH Architecture via Curbed
Yesterday, Curbed posted a better image of Triangle Court. Here it is in all it’s glory.
The building will occupy the former gas station site on the western half of the triangle formed by Grand, Keap and Borinquen. The future of the rest of the triangle (under separate ownership) is not known.
The City is suing Joshua Gutman, owner of the former Greenpoint Terminal Market site, over the construction of fences blocking city streets that are supposed to provide access to the waterfront.
the site’s owner, Joshua Guttman, […] built two fences in 2009, even though he knew they were on a public street, ignoring the city’s repeated requests to remove them… [Councilman Steve] Levin had asked Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan to have workers tear the fence down — but the city chose to fight in court in order to keep the street open in perpetuity.
This is the same part of the same property that has multiple unresolved fines and violations over the owner’s failure to maintain the bulkheads along the waterfront. And part of the same property that partially burned down in a massive fire in April, 2006. And part of the same property that caused the closing of American Playground on Noble Street earlier this year when parts of a building started falling onto the playground.
Clearly we are dealing with a very civic-minded ownership here.
Triangle Court, proposed design
Architect: KOH Architecture
Photo: nycmayorsoffice
Via Azi Paybarah, I came across this photo on the Mayor’s flickr stream (and also learned that the Mayor had a flickr stream).
Azi (and others) seem to be interested in the political ramifications of the photo (that’s Vito Lopez’s head cropped out at the top corner), but I was more interested in the design for the proposed building proposed for the former gas station site at Keap, Grand and Borinquen. The new building is designed by KOH Architecture of Little Neck/Flushing. Unfortunately, it will do nothing to raise the bar for design in the Union Avenue triangle (if anything, it lowers the bar quite a few notches).
They toll for no one, actually.
As NY Shitty reports, the bells at St. Anthony of Padua on Manhattan Avenue have been silent for some weeks now. According to the church, the mechanism to operate the bells is in need of repairs, to the tune of $10,000 to $25,000. To fund the repairs, they are devoting the proceeds of their annual raffle. For details on the raffle, and any other efforts to raise money for this, stay tuned to Ms. Heather.
Mayor Bloomberg was in the neighborhood today, launching the country’s first municipally-run brownfield clean up program. The program, which targets “lightly contaminated” sites, gives developers liability protection in addition to a clean development site.
The City chose 456 Grand Street, at the triangle that intersects Grand, Keap and Borinquen, and which is to be the site of a 6-story apartment building with ground-floor commercial, as the location to launch the program. This is the same site that was supposed to have broken ground – either as a retail or a residential development – almost exactly a year ago.
Mmmm, brisket
Photo: Village Voice
An Oklahoma-style barbecue restaurant has opened at 44 Berry (the old NY Quinine Co. building). Bob Sietsema is impressed:
If someone had told me five years ago that Williamsburg would become the city’s foremost barbecue destination, I would have guffawed. After all, most of the BBQ joints in town then—which numbered about a dozen—were located in Manhattan, whining that they couldn’t do the job properly because of city regulations against airborne emissions. The “smoke scrubbers” required to meet environmental guidelines were prohibitively expensive, the owners maintained. Turns out they were full of crap, saving themselves money by brushing baked meats with cloying sauces and calling it ‘cue, figuring nobody in New York could tell the difference. They were wrong.
(He was so impressed that he also posted pictures.)
WNYC Transmitter, 1937
Painting by Alan Gordon Lorimer
Source: WNYC
Once upon a time, there was an actual transmitter at Transmitter Park (the park to be at the base of Greenpoint Avenue). The transmitter was for WNYC, which was then a City-owned radio station. The station still exists (AM 820, FM 93.9 and online), though it is no longer owned by the City and it no longer uses the Greenpoint transmitter site.
WNYC’s Archives & Preservation project has a post about the Greenpoint transmitter, including two paintings by artist and architect A.G. Lorimer (no mention of whether or not he was related to the Lorimers of Greenpoint). The image above shows Lorimer’s gorgeous map of the transmitter site, complete with distances to five local airfields (all of which, with the exception of North Beach (aka LaGuardia Airport), are now closed). The second painting, a view of transmitter building and towers, can be seen on WNYC’s site.
Brooklyn Vegan has a statement from OSA on the summer concert park series, basically saying that the show will go on. (Not that there was really any doubt about that – the concerts are popular, profitable and well beyond the jurisdiction of the local community board.) And Brooklyn365 has a similar statement from Assemblyman Joe Lentol, with similar sentiments. Like everyone else (myself included), Lentol is unclear as to exactly what the board said last night, but this is his interpretation:
I believe that there were complaints about the noise and drunkenness of some concert goers afterwards on the neighborhood streets. There were also some requests for information about how much money has been raised and where those funds go.
That last bit is pretty important. Four (?) years in, and the community isn’t seeing the benefits of these concerts. Not that they aren’t there – OSA does tremendous work on behalf of the community. But clearly they can do a better job of publicizing that work.
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